


slept in a flame

by explosionshark



Series: Ice to Never [1]
Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, But like just a little bit, Dirty Talk, Established Relationship, F/F, Fluff and Smut, Light Dom/sub, Phone Sex, Smut, Sub Jack / Domme Miranda, Verbal Humiliation, but like. space phones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:20:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28329621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/explosionshark/pseuds/explosionshark
Summary: Jack has settled into her role at Grissom Academy while Miranda roams the galaxy, taking Cerberus apart piece by piece. Against all odds, the distance brought them closer.Miranda stops in at the Academy with something important to give to Jack and not enough time for what either of them truly wants.
Relationships: Jack | Subject Zero/Miranda Lawson
Series: Ice to Never [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2194944
Comments: 19
Kudos: 101





	1. slept in a flame

**Author's Note:**

> this was another prompt fill for a follower on tumblr! the prompt was for a kiss + "discreetly"
> 
> if this goes over well enough i could be persuaded to write a second chapter. really loving this unrestrained jack/miranda indulgence 
> 
> title from "ice to never" by the black queen

It’s not the first time Miranda has been to Grissom Academy, but everything feels as tense and awkward as if it were. This, she’ll admit, is largely her own fault.

Miranda has contacts - those she cultivated herself and those she can access through Shepard and the Shadow Broker - that could have provided her formal clearance to the military academy, but she’s suffered enough close calls lately, is on a strict enough timeline, for the risk of expediency to be outweighed by the complications of delay.

So she finds herself strolling through the echoey halls of the station with her forged cover and the data packet too sensitive to risk transmitting over the extranet. She keeps her gait nonchalant but purposeful, sparing only the briefest nods for the academy staff and soldiers she passes on her way. Looking like she was exactly where she needed to be and important enough not to risk interrupting is a skill Miranda cultivated early and effectively, and it’s served her better through covert ops like this than even the most convincing of forged documentation.

It would have been more ideal to do this like she had before, after class hours, when she could seek Jack out in her quarters but she needed to be back on the shuttle before it departed. The two hour window was, technically, generous if she could just leave the packet at a dead drop and get back out. But there was this thumping in her chest, this tightness in her rib cage at the thought of slipping in and out unseen.

Point one: Jack would be furious. And hurt.

Point two: Miranda had spent hours last night struggling to breathe and slathering medi-gel on hideously painful energy burn wounds stretching across her torso that even now stung faintly underneath the starched material of her stolen research uniform and the memory of Jack’s voice in her ear when she’d broken down, weak and in pain, and called her on a hacked comm link. Hours later, she still ached with a bone deep longing sharper and more consuming than any hunger she’d ever experienced.

Point three: Miranda was tired of being a ghost. The work she was doing was vital, necessary, worth every sacrifice - but despite the best efforts of her father, of the Illusive Man, she was still human. Sometimes she needed to let herself feel it.

So she found herself slipping into the expansive, gleaming chrome training room Jack is currently instructing her class inside of.

She has the better part of a minute to lurk in the background, observing Jack as she barks out orders with an authority she wears well, if a little awkwardly, like the Alliance-issue jacket draped across her shoulders.

It’s striking how good Jack is at this. Miranda never would have envisioned this for her, a role inside the rigid structure of the Alliance military’s most prestigious academy. She’s taken to the position with a sincerity that floods Miranda’s chest with a warm rush of pride and melancholy. Jack’s rougher edges are far from smoothed off, but she commands her students with a deft mix of criticism and encouragement. And they love her for it. They adore her. It’s so clear, watching as they push themselves to impress her, to earn her coveted praise. Miranda lets her mind stray, for just a moment, to imagining the kind of life Jack could have lead if she’d never come under Cerberus’ control. Perhaps she could have been a teacher of a different kind. Perhaps a caregiver or even a mother, raising children even younger than these who would know a love gentler than either of them could imagine.

Miranda finds herself tugged back to alertness by the sudden sensation of being watched and glances up to find Jack eyeing her from across the room. To her credit, Jack barely reacts to her sudden presence — their brief moment of eye contact is broken after a slight nod from Jack , and it never interrupts the speech she’s giving her students about the importance of balancing endurance and strength in creating biotic barriers.

But Jack’s students are an observant bunch, and a few of them followed her gaze back to Miranda, craning their necks to stare at her. She ignores their gazes, keeping her face carefully impassive as she raises her omni-tool, pretending to check a feed as she waits.

Jack ends her speech with a sharp clap of her hands and breaks the class into small groups to practice warp drills and Miranda seizes the opportunity to step forward. “Instructor Nought,” she calls, voice clear and toneless, professional. “A moment, please.”

Jack huffs a breath and rolls her eyes, raking an annoyed hand through the streak of hair atop her head. “Yeah, yeah. Keep your panties on, okay?”

Then, as if to prove a point, she lingers with one of the groups to offer pointers on proper form before finally breaking away to make her way to Miranda.

“Cheerleader,” she greets, voice low, hands flexing at her sides. Her shoulders are rigid with tension, muscles along her neck corded with strain and Miranda knows that the students no doubt spying on them from across the room will read her body language as borderline hostile. She wonders how much of this is intentional on Jack’s part, and how much is the truth bleeding out, this precarious, hungry, coiled thing between them showing itself at the margins.

“Instructor,” Miranda nods stiffly, feeling a pang of regret as dismay flickers across Jack’s face at her continued formality. She imagines, just for a moment, reaching out, brushing her fingertips along the exposed line of Jack’s clavicle beneath her jacket, of tangling their hands together, letting her body sway into Jack’s, feeling the weight of her in return and dismisses the fantasy almost as soon as it forms. Not here. Not yet.

Jack watches her for a long moment in silence, taking in her appearance with a guarded look. Her eyes linger on Miranda’s hip, the area still tingling with the aftereffects of rapid healing and lingering nerve damage. “Thought you were half-dead on Omega right now.”

Miranda shakes her head shortly, “I left last night. And the advancements of modern medicine are truly remarkable.”

“Last night, huh?” Jack says, leering a little now in a way that heats the blood in Miranda’s veins. “And you rode all night to see me? Shit, this is gonna be some booty call huh? Too bad you’re timing is fucked, I can’t exactly just ditch these little bastards without raising a few eyebrows.”

“I have something for you,” Miranda says, choosing not to continue the banter. At Jack’s lascivious grin, she has to fight to keep herself from smiling in response, but can’t quite stop the roll of her eyes as she continues, “Something else.”

“Well?” Jack prompts, after a moment.

“Something… sensitive,” Miranda clarifies, despite knowing that Jack is fully aware of the need for discretion and is only prolonging this part of the conversation out of pure, pedantic malice. Then again, her idea of foreplay has always been a bit odd.

“You sure it’s not that first thing I guessed, then?” Jack teases, and it’s only the keen awareness of Jack’s students eyes on them that keeps Miranda from seizing her by the lapels and dragging her into a kiss that would end this ridiculous charade and take her well in hand. “Because I seem to recall you being pretty fucking sensitive last time I had my fingers up your—”

It’s an exceedingly gentle biotic push, barely a ripple in the air that sends Jack lurching a half step to the side, as if she’d just briefly lost her balance, but it earns Miranda a fearsome glower. It succeeds, at least, in shutting her up before she can get too carried away and blow Miranda’s cover in front of an entire group of gossipy teenagers far too invested in their favorite teacher’s personal life.

Miranda knows from studying the layout of the station that there’s a small control room attached to the training facility, so she turns on her heel and marches straight for it, allowing herself a small smirk as she hears Jack’s clunky boots echoing her footsteps. She swipes a keycard for entrance and leads them into the room in silence.

“Hey, this is supposed to be like, special clearance only,” Jack points out, making a grab for the keycard dangling from Miranda’s fingers. The brush of the pads of Jack’s fingers on the underside of Miranda’s wrist as she takes the card from her sends a shiver down Miranda’s spine.

“I’m aware,” Miranda shrugs, crossing the room to the small desk in the corner, settling onto it gently and crossing her still sore legs daintily in front of her. She leans back on her palms a little to push out her breasts, feeling entitled to a little teasing of her own after Jack’s behavior in front of her students. “That’s why I cloned your access card last time I was here.”

Jack’s too distracted by staring at Miranda’s chest to register the words immediately, but once she does she lets out a low chuckle, crossing the room in slow, seductive strides that kick Miranda’s heartbeat up into her throat. “Oh, you sneaky bitch.”

She yanks Miranda’s uninjured leg roughly, pushing it to the floor and stepping closer to box Miranda in with her thighs, slapping the keycard down onto the desktop with a metallic _clink_. Jack’s hand lands on the upper swell of Miranda’s ass, travels up her spine, her shoulder blades, to fist itself into her hair and tug it back, tilting Miranda’s mouth up to receive Jack’s kiss.

It’s a shower of sparks. An electric overload. Devastating and consuming and exhilarating. Jack’s mouth is hungry and hard, her teeth sharp, her tongue searching, desperate. She tugs at Miranda’s hair, slips a hand up the hem of Miranda’s shirt just to feel her skin, breathes harsh little puffs of air into Miranda’s mouth and actually _keens_ aloud when Miranda pulls back, stays her with a shaking hand splayed over Jack’s chest.

“Wait,” Miranda says, breathy and far-away to her own ears. She swallows hard against the molten desire in Jack’s eyes and slides down off the desk. She rolls down the waistband of her pants far enough to access the hidden pocket sewn into the fabric and tears it to withdraw the data chit she’d hidden in the uniform. By the time she reaches out to press the chit into Jack’s waiting palms, her hands have stopped shaking and her voice is smooth and in control. “It’s only partially decrypted,” Miranda explains, watching as Jack turns the chit over in her fingers. “I ran out of time to finish the job. But—”

Miranda lifts her omnitool and fires off a message that immediately pings as received on Jack’s. “Run the rest of the data through these programs. All it will take is time and processing power, both of which I’ve been short of.”

“What is it?” Jack asks, though from the quietness of her voice Miranda knows she’s already guessed.

“Cerberus classified intel regarding the Subject Zero project, among other things,” Miranda says, surprised at how cold and level she can keep her voice when discussing these things, even now. “Data collected from various experiments, lists of personnel, details on how the project was intended to continue if it hadn’t been disrupted.”

Jack closes her fist around the chit and for a breathless moment Miranda thinks she might crush it in her hands. But she takes a deep breath, slips it into her boot instead. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

It’s not a question Miranda expected. It throws her off balance, casting her into doubt. Had she made a mistake? Had Jack really just wanted to leave this all behind after Pragia? Was she forcing her to live that old trauma again, opening an old wound finally beginning to mend?

But, no. Jack couldn’t have changed that much over these few months. Surely.

“Whatever you like,” Miranda says, finally. “You should know, I’m tracking the identifiable personnel attached to the project. I’m building a database of the surviving parties.”

Jack looks up, face unreadable.

Miranda wants to touch her. Wants to pull Jack back into her arms, wants to be smothered in the solidness of her. She wants to strip her out of that jacket, lay her back bare against the desk, to hold her there and look at her there until they’re both burning with need, to touch her soft, hard, over and over, to leave marks, something that will linger even after she’s left the station for the empty void of space.

This thing between them feels so fragile in this moment, more breakable than it’s ever felt because the feelings are real now, the stakes are palpable.

And Miranda feels out of her depth, clumsy and unsure, because she’s never wanted anything this badly before. She’s never felt this close to something she needs so desperately slipping through her fingers.

She can’t think of a way to take back control of the situation, to manipulate it back to safety, so she says the only thing she knows she can promise. “I’ll find them, Jack. And I’ll make them pay.”

“You couldn’t have done this a few months back? Before I got stuck with babysitting duty?” Jack asks, swallowing hard.

“I couldn’t have,” Miranda knows it was half a joke, a deflection but she answers anyway. They both know it’s the truth.

Detangling herself from Cerberus, reckoning with the impact of her life’s work and committing herself to dismantling it has been a painful, complicated experience. An unraveling of the self.

She never expected to find sympathy, camaraderie in the endeavor with Jack, of all people. It began reluctantly enough, information exchanged at Shepard’s behest in the period before Jack landed at the academy. It continued in unexpected communications exchanged sporadically - a shock to them both, but tentatively nurtured out of a mutual desperation, a lifetime’s carefully cultivated, suffocating loneliness.

And then a field training exercise that placed Miranda and Jack on the same planet, through a series of half-coincidences. The long night drinking Skyllian whisky in Miranda’s cramped hotel room, the reckless ignition of the attraction that had always simmered bitterly under even their most venomous interactions.

And now this.

Miranda in a stolen uniform on an Alliance space station, clock ticking away faster than the thunderous beating of her heart, Jack before her wrapped up in responsibility, in bonds she could never have imagined, the future a palpable, breakable thing suspended in the air between them.

“You have to leave,” Jack says, a statement, not a question.

“I do,” Miranda confirms, glancing at the time on her omni-tool. 

“And you can’t,” Jack pauses, blinking rapidly, jaw working at nothing and the swell of yearning and tenderness the sight kicks up in Miranda’s chest has her fighting to keep her breath even. “Not even one night…?”

“I’m sorry,” Miranda mutters, wincing at how pathetic it sounds.

Jack nods, steps forward again to back Miranda into the desk. Miranda lets herself be pushed, knowing she should be on her way back to the shuttle but unable to make herself leave Jack just yet.

Jack’s fingers slide the hem of her shirt up again, tracing the still-healing patches of skin on Miranda’s abdomen. “I swear to fucking god, Lawson, if you get yourself killed I’ll make you regret the day you were born. I don’t care how fancy your fucking genes are, you’re not some invincible vid star, so stop acting like one.”

Miranda covers Jack’s hand with her own. Impulsively, she raises their entwined hands, presses a delicate kiss to the pads of Jack’s fingers.

Her heart pounds and nerves twist her stomach — this isn’t how they are with each other. Soft, intimate - not without a near death experience and several hours of frantic marathon sex to chalk it up to beforehand. But she needs the reassurance, the memory of the hitch in Jack’s breath at the contact, to hold onto when she’s back on the shuttle, alone again.

“You need to get back out there,” Miranda says, nodding towards the door to the training facility. “You’ve got to set a good example now, Instructor.”

Jack rolls her eyes, “I _am_ setting a good example. They probably all think I’m in here getting railed by the hot researcher with the obvious stick up her ass. Everyone knows kickass biotic death machines get as much pussy as they can handle. That’s way more fucking aspirational than like medals and dumb commendations and shit.”

“It’s a marvel to me how the Alliance’s finest biotic training institute put such a crass, reckless maniac like you in charge of molding young minds,” Miranda scoffs, but the tightening of her fingers around Jack’s takes the bite out of it.

Reluctantly, she disentangles her fingers from Jack’s. She adjusts her clothing to look less like she’d just been groped in a glorified military supply closet, letting her hair out of its bun before putting it back up, neater, pretending the weight of Jack’s gaze on her didn’t make it nearly impossible to prepare herself to leave.

“You’re really gonna come all this way, get me all horny, and leave before you can even get me off?” Jack whines and Miranda’s grateful for the opportunity to banter, to take her mind off of how badly she wishes she could stay. “Fucking tease.”

“Now, Jack, we both know that you can get yourself off perfectly well,” Miranda says, injecting as much disdain into her voice as she can, suppressing a smile as Jack squirms in response. “And you will. Tomorrow night, when I call you, and not a moment sooner.”

“You’re not the boss of me,” Jack bites out and they’re back in familiar territory. She leans back onto the desk she’d pinned Miranda against just moments ago, rolling her hips obscenely forward, sliding her thumbs down into the waistband of her pants and tugging them slightly lower. “You’ve gotta go anyway, right? How would you even stop me from hanging back and rubbing one out before you’re even on your stupid shuttle?”

Jack wouldn’t, not with her students right outside, but Miranda appreciates the provocation for what it is.

“Do it, then, if you’re that much of a degenerate,” Miranda says in her flattest voice. “Just don’t expect me to waste my time on you later. I have important work to do, and that doesn’t include rewarding mediocrity.” 

“Y’know what’s really mediocre? Leaving your— leaving _me_ , totally blue balled,” Jack says, blushing furiously at her slip.

Miranda can’t help herself. She reaches out across the space between them, brushing the pad of her thumb across Jack’s still-swollen bottom lip and then leans in for another kiss. This time it’s slow, Miranda maintaining a firm control even as Jack gasps and arches up into her. Miranda kisses her deeply, her hands on either side of Jack’s head, moving her where she wants her, pouring promises and want and ~~love~~ desire from her mouth into Jack’s, who swallows it all greedily, desperately.

When she breaks away, keenly aware of how little time she has left to make her way to the other side of the shuttle, she schools her features into the most unimpressed expression she can manage, the one she knows sets Jack’s blood boiling.

“You’ll manage,” she murmurs, leaning in for one last, brief kiss. “Don’t disappoint me, Jack,” she calls over her shoulder as she struts out of the room. “I’ll know.”


	2. to keep me open and true

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it's the phone sex chapter. what do you want?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title again from the song ice to never by the black queen. if you like moody synth pop they're really heavy on jack/miranda vibes.
> 
> heed the tags, especially if you're sensitive to power dynamics in smut

When the call comes in, Jack answers on the first ring.

“That was fast,” Miranda’s laugh is genuine delight, but she pitches it low, and throws a barb at the end, all honeyed condescension, “even for you, Jack.”

“Yeah, well, sue me for wanting to get off already,” Jack snaps, embarrassed in that warm, tingling way that Miranda makes her feel.

“You waited, then,” Miranda muses, not sounding surprised at all. “I knew you would.”

Jack’s not sure if that’s faith or arrogance on Miranda’s part, but either way it’s probably a little misplaced. She waited, this time, but it’s not like she didn’t think about getting herself off in the shower after classes yesterday or even this morning when she woke up before her alarm, hot and swollen with fading dreams of Miranda clinging like cobwebs in her mind.

It’s not obedience that stayed her hands. Hell, Miranda can order her around as much as she wants, has done since the day they met, and she’ll be lucky if Jack actually listens even half the time.

But she remembered Miranda’s haughty voice as she’d slipped out of the vacant academy office the other day “don’t disappoint me, Jack,” and she couldn’t bring herself to risk it. Not knowing that Miranda probably had every moment of this encounter planned down to the second, the insane Type-A bitch.

“Yeah, well, you promised to make it worth my while,” Jack says, frowning at the still-blank console screen. “Hey, why the fuck can’t I see you?”

“Ah, we won’t be doing that tonight.” There’s the slightest hesitation in Miranda’s voice that sets Jack’s heart hammering.

“I got that. _Why?_ ” Jack presses, worry sparking in her chest like a live wire.

“It’s harder to encrypt a live video feed across this distance,” Miranda says, more composed now. “There would be considerable delay.”

Jack can’t tell if that’s the whole truth. Seeing Miranda yesterday, even for the brief time they’d shared, had been a massive relief. The last time they’d talked had been the night before — again no video — though Miranda had been hurt badly enough then to not be able to hide it.

She can’t tell now if the lack of video is truly Miranda’s attempt to mitigate the lag of long distance communication, or if it was to hide some kind of damage or danger she didn’t want Jack to see.

Even after all these months it’s bizarre to think about where they are today. Miranda, the natural leader, the Cerberus cheerleader, carving a one-woman swath of destruction through Cerberus’ ranks, bringing them to their knees while Jack stays safe at an Alliance training facility, teaching a bunch of stupid kids how to improve their chances of not dying.

As much as Jack loves her role at the academy— and against all odds she _does—_ there’s part of her that finds the whole situation unfair. She knows the work she’s doing is important, she’d put the lives of her kids above what she wants any day of the week, but she can’t help but feel like a coward when she compares her reality to Miranda’s; when she considers the fact that it’s Miranda, not herself, continuing the work of tracking down the Cerberus operatives that had survived their involvement with the Teltin project.

Jack glances across the room at the trunk at the foot of her bed, the one with the false bottom where the data packet Miranda had smuggled into her was currently locked away. She swallows hard, digs her fingertips into the swell of her knees and asks, “You hurt or something?”

“No,” Miranda answers immediately. After a moment, she adds, “Not badly.”

“Miranda—”

“I mean it,” she cuts in gently, and Jack forces herself to unclench her aching jaw. “I took a dive out of a skycar, landed on a few stacked pallets of fertilizer. I’m a little worse for wear, but the damage is light bruising. Hardly worth mentioning at all.”

“You jumped out of a moving vehicle and landed in a big pile of shit?” Jack can’t help but snort, letting the tension seep out of her body with a low chuckle. “Oh, Princess.”

“The fertilizer was sealed in bags, the impact didn’t—”

“I would have paid money to see that,” Jack cackles, throwing herself back onto her bed with a muffled thump. “Wonder how much I’d have to bribe the Shadow Broker for the security cam footage. Do you think we’d get the friends and family discount? Where’d this all go down anyway?”

“Nice try,” Miranda mutters. “I’m not giving up my location on an unsecured connection.”

“I thought you said this call was encrypted?” Jack argues, just because she can.

“Encrypted enough to get you off without anyone tracing it back to me. Not encrypted enough for me to tell anyone listening in where to find me.”

The level of risk Miranda is undertaking for a bit of phone sex is, admittedly, pretty dispraportionate. 

Even after all these months, Jack’s shocked by how… reciprocal the whole thing between them is.

That Miranda wants this as much as Jack does. That she wants Jack as much as Jack wants her. That it’s not just Jack waiting around for whenever Miranda has the spare time to stop off at Grissom and throw her a pity fuck.

Miranda’s not getting anything out of the arrangement either — besides the obvious. She’s not using Jack for her powers or her access or even, with the distance between them, her body most of the time. The whole arrangement is frighteningly nonsexual more often than not - Miranda calling mostly to say that she’s safe, to pass on some vital info, to hear another human voice. By far, the weirdest part of it all is how easy it’s been going from the businesslike exchange of information they’d begun once the Normandy had been impounded and the crew had split apart to something like friendship to… whatever the hell this is.

“So you’re still gonna make me come even though someone else might be listening? Kinky,” Jack teases, letting her hand drift down to toy with the button of her pants.

“It’s highly unlikely that anyone’s actually listening in on our communications right now,” Miranda sniffs, haughtily. “But you’re right that it wouldn’t stop me. Though, I’d much rather be there in person, so I could wipe that smug look off of your face.”

“How do you know what the look on my face is, cheerleader?” Jack drawls. “Did you sneak a camera in here when you were stealing my shit?”

“I hate to break it to you, Jack, but you’re hardly as dark and unknowable as you might think. Some might even say you’re predictable.”

“Some but not you, huh?”

“Never me,” Miranda says, voice all phony sweetness. “Now get your hands out of your fucking pants. I didn’t say you could start.”

Instinctively. Jack yanks her hands up from where her fingertips had been teasing past her waistband, swearing softly as she catches herself.

Not quietly enough, if Miranda’s answering chuckle is enough to go by. “My, my. Go ahead, Jack, and ask again how I know.”

Jack’s not sure if Miranda means it literally or if she’s just being a bitch and trying to make a point. Still, she sinks deeper into the bed, palms pressed flat against the sheets and asks, shakily, “How’d you know?”

“Because I know _you_ ,” Miranda says, voice fierce and Jack shivers at the sound of it. “I know how shameless you are, how you mouth off and play act at defiance because nothing makes you hotter than when I put you back in your place. I know how you’d never admit it. I know how much you wish I was there right now, pressing you back into the mattress, and whispering all of this into your ear. I know how wet you are, right now, listening to me tell you this because you like that I’ve paid enough attention to learn it all — even the parts you wish I wouldn’t say, because they make you feel weak. I know that you like that too, even though you feel like you shouldn’t — being weak, for me.”

Jack lets out a low groan, curling her fingers in the sheets and wiggling her hips against nothing. She’s flushed already, writhing with pent up energy.

“Am I right?” 

“What?” Jack asks reflexively and then takes a shaky breath as her brain catches up with the conversation. “Yeah. Yes.”

“About which parts?”

“All of it. Fuck,” Jack sighs, bites her lip against how much she wishes she could touch Miranda right now. “Do you have to be such a bitch about it?”

“No,” Miranda says flatly. “But I like to be.”

 _You like it too_ , the unspoken rest of the sentence hangs between them.

“I’m really wet,” Jack says, after waiting a beat for Miranda to pick up where she’d left off.

“Well, that’s hardly shocking,” Miranda mocks lightly. “It doesn’t take much, does it Jack?”

“Aren’t you going to do something about it?” Jack asks through gritted teeth, flushing hotly at the derision in Miranda’s voice. “Or should I just hang up now and deal with it myself?”

“Please, you’re not about to do that,” Miranda laughs. “If that was what you wanted, Jack, you’d have gotten yourself off last night, like you’d threatened. But you waited for me, didn’t you?”

“I— Yeah.”

“Why did you do that?”

“What?”

“Why did you wait for me?”

“Because I—” _Because I need it to be you_. “Because it wouldn’t be as good by myself.”

“Take off your jacket, if you’re still wearing it.”

Jack pushes herself up to her elbows and shrugs out of the jacket, tossing it behind her on the floor with an audible thump.

“Why didn’t you find someone else, then?”

“What?” Jack’s foggy mind struggles to catch up to Miranda’s bizarre question, goosebumps prickling along her bare arms in the cold air of the cabin.

“I’m sure there are plenty of potential volunteers at the Academy willing to get you off for the night, if that’s what this is about,” Miranda continues.

She’s right.

It had taken some time but plenty of the other Academy faculty have warmed up to her, at this point. Hell, there are a few she’d even admit to liking back. Some of them are attractive enough and interested in her — and there’s passing soldiers an auxiliary staff, besides, if Jack didn’t want to be involved with another member of the faculty. For better or for worse, Jack’s never had a hard time finding someone to warm her bed for the night.

But that _isn’t_ what this is about. At least not all the way.

“Yeah, so? I don’t want them.” 

_I want you_ , is what she means. It’s too hard to say, but she knows Miranda understands when she hums and says, “Take off your shirt, cup your breasts for me, but don’t touch your nipples yet.”

Jack groans and complies, feeling like she could crawl out of her skin once her hands are on her tits. “Can I squeeze them?”

Miranda pauses, like she’s making a tough decision, then sighs, “Lightly yet. Ordinarily I wouldn’t consider it so soon, but you’ve pleased me. I think good behavior deserves a reward.”

Jack squeezes her breasts, lightly, rhythmically. It doesn’t do much for her, she doesn’t have much sensitivity outside of her nipples, but it feels good to be given permission. “I have?”

“Pleased me? Oh yes,” Miranda admits readily. “I like when you stop fighting me on everything. I like when you’re honest with me.”

“What else could I do?” Jack asks, ignoring the twist of shame in her gut at giving in so easily, being so transparent. “To please you?”

“You know, that’s the first time tonight you’ve asked what you can do for me instead of the other way round?” Miranda points out. “Trace your nipples with the pads of your fingers. Begin slowly. Tell me how it feels.”

Jack, for once, obeys without comment. The contact is so startling after all this buildup she nearly pulls away from her own touch. “Feels good.”

“Twist them.”

Jack does, hissing at the sensation.

“Gentler,” Miranda instructs sharply. Then, “They’re hard, aren’t they?”

“Mmhmm.”

“If I were there, would you want my mouth or my fingers?” The bored, almost conversational tone of Miranda’s voice floods Jack’s pussy with a new gush of wetness. 

“Y-your fingers,” Jack gasps, twisting and rolling her nipples the way she imagines Miranda would: steady and determined, but not harshly.

“Why?”

“I’d want… I’d want you kissing me, while you did,” Jack admits, eyes fluttering closed at the fantasy. Almost without meaning to she thinks back to the last time she and Miranda had fucked, in that big hotel bed on the Citadel. She can almost feel the tickle of Miranda’s hair along her bare chest, the heady floral scent of her shampoo in Jack’s nostrils. 

Miranda moans, barely audible, from the other end of the line and Jack wants to ask if she’s touching herself too. But she’s too scared of breaking the spell that’s fallen over them by interrupting, so she swallows down the impulse and returns to the fantasy.

“You’d kiss me… hard and soft at the same time,” Jack says. “No one else has ever kissed me like that. Like they could tear my throat out but liked me too much to try. Y’know?”

“Jack…”

“I’d buck up my hips. Try to ride your thigh.”

“Take your right hand,” Miranda cuts in, sounding strained. “Run it down your torso. Slowly.” Jack does. Almost before she even reaches her waistband Miranda’s voice barks out another command. “Unbutton your pants and pull the zipper down. You can cup yourself over your underwear, but that’s all.”

Jack’s breath hitches as she follows Miranda’s instructions as much as she can. But—

“I’m not wearing any underwear.”

Miranda groans like she’s in pain. “All day?”

“Not since— I took a shower before I came up here. I knew you were going to call, and I—”

“You want it badly, don’t you?” Miranda demands, low, filthy. “You’ve been fucking desperate for it, since I left.”

“Yeah,” Jack says, touching herself lightly because Miranda didn’t say she _couldn’t._

“It’s a miracle you could get any work at all done today, with your head so full of thoughts of me fucking you, your cunt dripping at the memory of me,” Miranda says. “Don’t touch your clit. Push your pants down your hips and run your fingers down your slit. I want you to tell me how wet you are.”

Jack wriggles her way up the bed, kicking her pants down to her ankles. She lets her fingers glide down, feeling barely any resistance against her hot, swollen flesh. “Fucking shit. I’m so wet for you, Miranda. I'm ready.”

“You’re dripping all over yourself, aren’t you?” Miranda practically growls, all traces of feigned indifference seared from her voice. “Your thighs are a mess. You’re ruining those sheets just thinking about me. What would you do to have me there right now, instead of your hand?”

“Anything,” Jack chokes out, startling herself with how much she means it, how little it scares her to admit.

“Soon,” Miranda says, lowly, and Jack knows it’s a promise. “The next time I can find a way but — this has to do for now. Could you take me inside?”

“Yeah,” Jack moans, already tracing her entrance. “Easy.”

Miranda scoffs, “Easy, huh? When aren’t you? Go on, then. Two fingers, all the way.”

Jack does and exhales, high pitched and breathy at the fullness. “Fuck.”

“I’d take you hard,” Miranda tells her, breath hitching. “I’ve had enough of the talking back, the teasing. I’d lay a forearm across your chest to lever you down, and fuck your cunt hard enough to make you gasp and writhe beneath me. Another finger. Now.”

“Are you touching yourself?” Jack asks, desperate. She closes her eyes, trying to picture what Miranda must look like, her hand working between her legs as she lies back on a bed or, more likely, hunched over a desk someplace too far from where Jack wants her.

“Three fingers, Jack,” Miranda says, ignoring her. “It’s not too much?”

“No,” Jack pants, and it’s true, even if she feels full enough to ache just faintly.

“Greedy,” Miranda accuses. “Is it enough for you?”

“No.” How could it be, if it wasn’t Miranda herself? “Fuck, I want you here.”

“I wouldn’t have to hold you down though, would I?” Miranda picks the fantasy back up. “You’d let me fuck you as hard as I wanted to. Like that night on Elysium. You’d take anything I decided to dish out, wouldn’t you? Because you love how much I want you.”

“Anything,” Jack babbles.

“Touch your clit,” Miranda orders. “I’d grind against it with the heel of my palm, but I’d fuck you through it. I’d lick my way up your neck, bite down hard at the corner of your jaw. You’d have to cover the marks, or find a way to explain them to your buttoned up Alliance colleagues back at the Academy — not my problem. You’d love it— the feel of my teeth on your throat, the pain cutting through all this pleasure.”

Jack nods, even though Miranda can’t see her, and drags her fingernails hard down her clavicle, relishing the sting. She works heel of her palm against her clit like Miranda described, straining up against her hand for more friction. “Feels so good.”

“Do you see how nice it can be when you just fucking listen to me?” Miranda asks. “Instead of talking back all the time? Maybe you’ll remember this next time you have something smart to say.”

It’s so like Miranda to be passive aggressive in the middle of phone sex, Jack can’t help but laugh, “Fat fucking chance.”

“You’re insufferable,” Miranda says, but there’s no heat behind it. “Do you want to come?”

“Yeah,” Jack moans, bucking up against her hand. Pleasure is pooling hot and insistent in her belly. It's getting harder to focus on Miranda's words, harder to resist the urge to push herself over the edge.

“You’ve had the good sense not to bother asking for it this whole time,” Miranda makes it an insult and a reluctantly given compliment at once. “So you’re not totally hopeless.”

“Are you close too?” Jack asks, desperate enough to ignore the barb. “Tell me what you want.”

“I’m close,” Miranda says, her accent curling around the words, sending shivers down Jack’s spine. “I want you up on your knees, riding your own hand. I want you desperate and dripping, on the edge of losing control, and I want you looking down into my eyes as I fuck you. I want you to know that no one else could do this to you.”

It’s almost painful to stop touching herself, but Jack does, long enough to push herself up onto her knees. Her thighs shake slightly, but she leans forward, bracing herself against the headboard with a single hand and grinding down onto her other with short, sharp jerks of her hips. She closes her eyes, throwing her head back and losing herself in Miranda’s voice. Imagining the feel of Miranda’s hands curling around the backs of Jack’s thighs, the heat of her body beneath Jack, the burning intensity of her gaze on Jack’s face.

“Let me come, let me come,” Jack begs, though Miranda hadn’t asked this time.

She knows it was the right move anyway when she hears Miranda gasp, high, choking out a breathless, “Yes. Do it, Jack.”

It only takes a few more desperate swipes of her own fingers to wring the orgasm from her body, explosive, almost agonizing for all the built up intensity. Jack chokes off a scream, leaning forward onto the arm braced against the headboard and sinking her teeth into it to muffle the sound. Her thighs quiver with the strain of holding up her weight, the mattress dipping under her knees, but Jack doesn’t stop touching herself until she’s ridden out the last waves of her pleasure.

“Oh fuck,” Jack gasps, slumping down onto the bed. It’s so fucking empty. She's drained and suddenly so lonely, mildly startled to feel tears gather in her eyes. “Oh, _fuck_.”

“Jack,” Miranda’s voice is suddenly soft, like she _knows_. 

She probably does, the bitch. Since Jack is apparently so transparent to her.

She doesn’t know what to say that won’t make this whole situation more miserable, that won’t expose more than she wants to.

Jack curls onto her side, feeling suddenly cold, and wiggles under the slightly damp covers, still shuddering. Fuck, she’s going to have to change the sheets. Probably take another shower, while she’s at it.

“Jack,” Miranda’s voice again, insistent but every bit as gentle as before. Jack grits her teeth against it. “Are you still with me?”

She almost wants to close the link, let Miranda think they got disconnected. She pulls up her omnitool to do just that but can’t bring herself to hit the command.

“Was that too much?” Miranda’s voice is quiet. “Did I—”

“It was fine,” Jack says, hating the low rasp of her voice. Too close to tears. “Your perfect record remains unmarred, don’t worry.”

“I’m sorry I can’t be there with you,” she says it so quiet and so serious, like she’s telling a secret. It makes Jack’s battered heart ache uncomfortably.

“Why?” Jack huffs out an annoyed breath, pulling the blankets tighter around her body. “Wanna cuddle?”

She doesn’t even know why she’s being such a bitch. It’s going to make everything so weird. Miranda’s going to know something’s up, going to know that Jack’s brain is busted even worse than she thought, that somewhere along the line she’d lost control over how all of this made her _feel_ and—

“You say that as if I haven’t ever held you before,” Miranda says. “As if I’m not going to again.”

“Are you?” Jack blurts out, and wants to put her head through the steel wall of her cabin immediately after. Stupid, stupid. “How can you be so sure there’s going to be a next time?”

“Ah,” Miranda pauses, Jack thinks she can hear something rustling in the background. Maybe she’s laying in a bed of her own afterall. “You said it yourself — my record is perfect.”

“You’re out there — alone — throwing yourself out of cars and getting shot up by Cerberus goons. The reapers are—”

“You might have noticed, Jack, that I have a way of getting what I want,” Miranda interrupts. “I wanted to get away from my father — I did. I wanted to rise in the ranks of Cerberus — I became the organization's right hand. I wanted to destroy Cerberus — I’m doing it. And I want to come back to you, so I will. Next time and the time after that and the time after that. Do you understand?”

“Do you know how fucking humiliating it is?” Jack demands, frustrated and heartened by Miranda’s confidence simultaneously. “To keep letting you make me feel this way?”

“I do, yes,” Miranda says, calmly. She pauses, voice gentle again when she adds, “I didn’t expect you either, Jack. I couldn’t have seen this coming and I certainly didn’t plan for it but I wouldn’t change things. I wouldn’t take it back. Would you?”

Jack knows, down to her core, that Miranda’s question is not rhetorical.

If she wants out, this is an opportunity to break things off without malice or recrimination, with some sliver of her heart still salvageable. Probably.

She could tell Miranda to fuck off, right now, and she would without fighting Jack on it or making it difficult at all. 

It’s so hard to imagine a future for them that doesn’t end with one or both of them dead. And she has no idea how to be with someone for real — the closest thing she ever had to love, the real kind, ended with Murtock dead, with Jack alone. A disaster. A tragedy. A stupid fucking mistake she should have known better than to make.

One she might avoid now if she could just…

“I wouldn’t take it back,” she says, finally, wiping away the frustrated tears spilling down her cheeks with a rough pass of her open palm.

“Yes, you sound thrilled about it too,” Miranda huffs.

“Fucking sue me,” Jack rolls her eyes. “This shit is hard, Princess. Some of us can’t just turn off our emotional processing centers when it's convenient, okay?”

“Ha ha,” Miranda’s voice is flat, but there’s real amusement underneath that unclenches something hard and tight in Jack’s chest. “Look. I won’t let you regret it, Jack.”

Arrogant ass.

“No?” Jack rolls her eyes, because of course Miranda would talk about not breaking Jack's heart like it's another critical mission objective. 

“No,” Miranda says seriously. “You’re mine now, as much as I’m yours. And I take very good care of what’s mine.”

Fucking spoiled brat.

“Don’t get all mushy on me now, Lawson, I might hurl,” Jack says instead of _Please mean it._

“You always did have the sweetest pillow talk, Jack,” Miranda sighs. “Listen…”

“You have to go,” Jack fills in.

“If I can wrap things up here soon, I’ll have a bit of time before I have to move to the next phase. A weekend. If you can manage the shore leave…”

“I’ll do it,” Jack promises. “Tell me when and where.”

“I will. But for now—”

“Wait. Listen,” Jack bites out, feeling anxiety prickle at her skin. “I want that, I do but you’ve got to sleep. Take care of yourself. You can’t die out there because you’re exhausted and sloppy trying to rush things, okay?”

“You know I don’t need as much rest as a normal human—”

“— _Miranda_.”

“Okay,” Miranda sighs, but Jack can tell from the real annoyance in her voice that she’s won this argument. “Okay. I won’t do anything risky, Jack.”

“Promise?” Jack pushes.

“Yes,” Miranda says.

It’s an impossible thing to ask for, really. And maybe that makes it unfair. But the wave of relief that floods over Jack when Miranda agrees soothes like cool water on a burn. 

“Go then,” Jack says, after a beat. “Kick some Cerberus ass for me.”

“You know, normal girls would ask for flowers,” Miranda quips.

Jack barks out a laugh imagining Miranda showing up with a bouquet. “C’mon. Neither of us knows anything about what it’s like to be a normal girl.”

“True enough,” Miranda says and Jack can hear the smile in her voice. “I’ll see you soon, Jack.”

“Soon,” Jack agrees and cuts the comm link before she can lose the will to do it.

The room is still too cold, too empty, without Miranda’s voice filling it up.

But Jack feels lighter, warmer inside than before.

She rolls over, feet slapping the floor as she shoves herself into a sitting position on the edge of the bed. She’s got to shower, she’s got to change her sheets, she’s got to finish those performance evaluations before tomorrow morning, and she’s got to fill out a leave request she can turn in for one of these upcoming weekends, once Miranda makes good on her word.

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on [tumblr](http://explosionshark.tumblr.com) to read more prompt fills that won't make it to ao3 or to send one of your own


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